Since 9-11 we have become aware of many changes in today’s society. The government has tightened airport security all over the U.S., politicians use it to influence and manipulate their listeners, and there is a lot more national pride. We feel that traveling has been made harder because of the increase in security, and it is just a hassle these days to wait at the airport for 3 hours before your flight in order to get through all the checkpoints. We also feel that many politicians use the attacks to get sympathetic votes from their listeners; they bring them up and refer to the past in order to see how far we’ve come since then and how much farther we can go in the future. We feel that there is more pride in being an American now, because after the attacks everyone worked together to help get New York City back to working order and everyone mourned for those that were lost that day, even if they did not know anyone who died; everyone supported each other and America was unbeatable after that. It really brought the country together. It just makes us sad that it took something so horrific for everyone to realize that we are not in a protected bubble, that we are just as vulnerable as some third world countries, and we need to work together to come up with a solution to defeat terrorism absolutely.
We really liked the idea of the project when we first heard about it, but we were frightened that we wouldn’t be able to ask questions that our interviewees would connect to; we wanted them to be able to let go emotionally and give us deep answers. We were also frightened that there would be awkward moments in the interviews because this topic is so delicate and new to most people, but we found out that a lot of people did not mind sharing their ideas. We got some really good insight to people’s thoughts and reasons for things, and we felt that we were able to connect to them and understand where they were coming from. We took all of their thoughts, and from them we were able to start forming our own opinions on this tragedy and the war.
Overall, we were able to understand the events of 9-11 and the ongoing war from many different perspectives. We were able to take the many opinions and develop ideas on our own, prompting us to continue a discussion with each other on the war and 9-11 after the interviews were over. We thought that it was a great project and a wonderful experience!
Interviewees: 1.Connie and Bill Stratton: Sara’s grandparents
2.Doug Sutton: Taylor’s ex-neighbor
3.Sara Traberman: Taylor’s mother’s best friend
4.Christine Lauer: Taylor’s mother’s cousin
5.Eric Bronk: Taylor’s sister’s best friend’s dad
Questions Asked:
1.Where were you when you first heard about the attacks on the twin towers?
2.What was your first thought?
3.Did you fear for your safety?
4.Did you know anyone in New York or the buildings when it happened?
5.How did this change your perspective on…?
-flying
-U.S. government
-other countries
6. What do you think of the war? Do you support it?
7. How did this whole thing change your life?
Connie and Bill Stratton: Colorado originally from New Jersey
Sara Stratton: Where were you when you first heard about it?
Connie Stratton: I always watch the news from the minute I get up, but for some reason I didn’t. I got in my car and turned on the radio, and the first thing I heard about was President Bush saying, “God bless America,” and I thought, “My god what’s happened?” I had no idea and by the time I got to the store I knew what had happened.
Taylor Schow: Where exactly were you located in New Jersey?
Connie: 35 miles due west of New York City.
Sara: What were your first thoughts?
Connie: My first thought was how could anybody any people any idealist no matter where they came from kill in such a horrific way. So many innocent people, they weren’t killing soldiers, you know? So many innocent people with families, it just was an awful way to express their anger whatever their anger was.
Bill: I can’t describe to you what kind of emotions I had; they were just so terrible, and I just really can’t express those feelings.
Sara: Did you fear for your safety at all when you heard about it?
Connie: Yes I did, because we lived so close to New York City, and there was talk at the time about chemical biological things that might be coming. People feared the worst. With prevailing winds and if there had been a big chemical or biological devastation in New York City I felt that we might be subjected to some of that.
Taylor: Did this change your perspective on anything? Say on flying. Or the US government or other countries?
Connie: Of course. One, a little bit later, when I realized that the Clinton administration had chances to maybe stop some of this, I was very upset. Two, I was pleased Bush jumped right in. He really knew after 8 years of Clinton there was a big transition. And today, if I have to come down on losing a tiny bit of my liberties and being alive, I will do it in order to protect my life and my grandchildren’s life, and my children’s life, I will do that. I won’t give them all up but I will give a little more restrictive power to the government to protect my life.
Bill: It was almost impossible not to have negative feelings about where these terrorists were trained or came from, its just human nature.
Taylor: What about the war? Do you support it or not support it?
Connie: Okay, at first I wasn’t really sure. And I’ve always felt so badly about 2000 plus U.S. personnel have died. And I really feel terrible, but basically I guess I think the war will be a good idea if a democracy is established. The whole region may turn around because of Iraq and that’s my prayer.
Bill: I at first thought it was a mistake to go to war with Iraq; I thought that we should have pursued Bin Laden with all the resources that we had, but after a while I saw that it was necessary to get Saddam out of office and then with every atrocity, the beheadings of innocent men women and children on TV, boasting about it, the regular use of suicide bombers; there is no way that we should allow that to continue.
Taylor: Overall how did this change your life?
Connie: You know I must tell you, as much as I love my home in Jersey, it did make the move easier because I feel a little more safe out here. We are near Denver, but hopefully Denver will be one of the last cities to be hit. So it did make it easier for me in that respect to go ahead and move, you know you girls don’t realize, we didn’t grow up with this horrible, horrible crap, you know countries went to war and they fought each other, and that was it. Nobody, nobody, nobody deliberately killed babies, children; this is just insane right now. These people now, there is no way you can deal with them; you’re going to have to defeat them. They want our freedom our way of life, gone. And that’s what they are fighting, they’re fighting the freedom of people, and that’s sad.
Bill: I think it was more that we had to be closer to more of our family members because we were getting old and needed somebody to change our diapers.
Taylor and Sara: hahahaha.
Doug Sutton: California
Taylor: Where were you when you first heard about it?
Doug Sutton: I was watching the television, financial news station, when the first airplane hit the world trade center. It showed it about 5 minutes after the first plane hit. When the plane hit I believe that it had a news alert on immediately then it showed it very soon thereafter.
Taylor: Did you fear for your safety?
Doug: No, because I’m in California. When the first plane hit the first world trade center, it wasn’t clear that it was a terrorist attack. I wasn’t aware for instance that the direction that plane came from would have indicated to anybody that that was out of the ordinary. No plane normally comes from that direction, which would have told anybody who was watching that this is a problem, like most people, I just said what happened?
Sara: Did you know anyone who was in New York when it happened?
Doug: Yes, because I’m in the financial industry, I knew a number of people indirectly and a few directly who were working at the world trade center.
Taylor: Did this change your perspective on flying?
Doug: No, because it’s such an isolated incident and there was plenty of time before we next flew for the government to respond to it as far as safety goes.
Taylor: Did it change your perspective on the U.S. government?
Doug: I thought that our response was very, very poor and that we definitely needed to do a lot to make ourselves more safe.
Taylor: Like what?
Doug: Like, better control over our security agencies, so they talk to each other better so that they process the information one agency has more collectively rather than unilaterally.
Sara: What do you think of the war right now? Do you support it? What are your feelings?
Doug: I don’t like the term war on terrorism because terrorism isn’t anybody that you can have war on because everybody is always against terrorist acts that I know of. Terrorism is just an act used to accomplish a goal. So I don’t have any trouble with fighting extremists anywhere they are in the world but I have tremendous problems with how we are doing it and our approach to it. You guys use the term terrorism, all right, if you associate the term terrorism with the extremists who provided tremendous threat to our country and our way of life, if you call the extremists that do that terrorists, then it would seem to me that the first thing you would have to do is to say is to come to an agreement that you cannot successfully fight global extremism unilaterally. You must get the commitment and support of many, many, many other large countries so that you can together come up with a plan that will be accepted by the rest of the free world.
Taylor: So you don’t think that we will come out of this successfully?
Doug: Absolutely not the way that it’s going, because it’s a unilateral approach. It’s our approach or nothing. Did we make is safe after the initial assault? Did we provide the security for even the Iraqis walking the street? What did we do about bringing in other countries and other support systems and for that matter even the Iraqis to redevelop and rebuild Iraq? Did we gain the support of the Iraqis themselves in our efforts to make it their country and bring them back to a healthy environment? And is it in fact even possible to form one country with the pre specific sects that are there now? So no, I don’t think that we have a chance in your lifetime of making Iraq a safe, special idealistic country that we would respect. I think that first you have to start with a very basic thesis about what you want to accomplish. The problem is when you deal with things on a national level, its very, very tough Taylor in my opinion to get everybody or get the consensus because each one of us has their own specific opinions. For instance, there were many people who said that Iraq might not have been a tremendous threat to the United States but it was an overwhelming threat to Israel. And Israel deserved our support, therefore, even if they weren’t an imminent threat to us, they were an imminent threat to Israel so lets go get rid of Hussein for that reason alone. Other people said oil, we have to provide enough oil for us to live the way that we live so let’s go do it for that reason. Other reasons said that Hussein is a threat to Turkey and Turkey is the only true democracy in the area, so we have to support Turkey, so numerous people had their own ideas on why we should do it, but what was most important is that nobody would pause long enough so that we could get the support of other countries and to share the responsibly for success and commitment with other countries to make it a successful effort, so when it came time to ask the bigger question right upfront about can we in fact ever create a democracy, between the Turks, the Shias and the Sunnis, somebody in their right mind would have said this is never going to happen and they would say lets try and do something else, let’s create another form of government. Well perhaps they each live in an independent country, but they all get rights to the assets from the oil, but whatever the solution would have been, it would have been a better solution has we gone for bigger consensus and certainly one that would have offered better opportunities for success. I don’t support the efforts to go in initially for war. I’m an old man now. It was clearly obvious from before we went to war that we had no reason going into Iraq. It was not an imminent threat to us, and that’s the only reason that justified doing it. If we did go into it, it was certainly very irrational to go into with an army from the United States, because you are never going to get the commitment of the society. If very few people in the society have to pay the price, for the cost of war, whether it’s physical or monetarily, so I just think it was a terrible, terrible idea implemented terribly and those two terribles make it very tough to get a positive in the end.
Taylor: How did this change your life?
Doug: It made me more cynical towards our politicians. So what do you do about it? I mean you can’t just walk around being cynical all the time. What do you do?
Taylor: Act?
Doug: How?
Taylor: Against the politicians?
Doug: Well I don’t know how you act against the politicians except to get involved in some level. And that’s for instance where Sherry worked very hard in the city of Costa Mesa; to elect the people who you believe will represent the interest that you hold very important at some level. That’s one thing you can do about it. Another thing that you can do about it; you study your heads off and say you know what? I’m a teenager now, I have my hands full, and by the way I can’t vote yet anyway.
Sara: I like that one. Hahahaha.
Doug: What you can do is better prepare yourself to understand how people argue, how arguments are made, and be ready to act independently in response to arguments of all sides so that you can learn how to form your own opinions that’s based upon the education that we all hold so dearly. So the decision right now is not why we got in there, it’s what the heck do we do now that we’re there? I still think it comes back to the same question; is you have to somehow get enough people to get a vested interest so that they all have something at stake and can all win from the result and we’ll all lose if the result is not achieved. In short, you have to get people to make more of a commitment. Remember guys, you Taylor and you also Sara, you’re looking at this from an entirely different perspective. You aren’t reading the same things I’m reading, looking at the same information I am, you’re listening to your parents and your teachers who I have no input from. So it’s up to you guys to come up with some conclusion or some opinion about what you think can be learned from this mess and how we can best deal with it and how you can best deal with it individually and collectively
Sara Traberman: New Jersey
Sara: Where were you when you first heard about it?
Sara Traberman: I was at the gym. I remember everybody was sort of looking at the TV, and people were talking about, that there was an accident with a plane and everything and I got off the treadmill and I was watching the TV and I saw, because that second plane hitting the thing and as soon as I saw that, I left the gym.
Taylor: What was your first thought when you saw it?
Sara T.: I was completely horrified, and shocked.
Taylor: How far away do you live from New York?
Sara T.: We’re about 20 miles from New York. Actually, you can see New York from certain parts of the town because it’s kind of on a little hill mountain hill thing. You can see the skyline.
Taylor: So you could see the twin towers?
Sara T.: Well you could definitely see the big smoke for a long time after that. I think it was maybe two or three weeks after that. There was a big hazy black cloud that was there, and it took a long time for it to sort of dissipate.
Sara: Did you know anyone who was in New York when it happened?
Sara T.: Well, my husband was in New York, he works midtown. You know the twin towers were downtown so there’s that distinction, but he was midtown. I was worried because I don’t think they were clear about how everybody was going to get home, and there was talk about bridges possibly getting attacked. Manhattan is an island and to come back to New Jersey you either have to go over a bridge or go through a tunnel. So I was pretty nervous and I think cell phone service was kind of spotty. I think I emailed him or he emailed me.
Taylor: How did this change your perspective on flying?
Sara T.: You know it really didn’t. It just became more of an inconvenience with all the additional security and stuff like that. You know the thing that scared me more was that Unabomber guy or that not the Unabomber guy, the shoe bomber guy.
Sara: Did it change your perspective on the way you saw the US government?
Sara T.: I felt very, very proud of the way that Rudy Giuliani handled it, he was the mayor at the time, and I thought he did a really good job like keeping everybody calm. I thought everybody sort of rallied around it and I felt like it was time where there wasn’t all this bickering between democrats and republicans and everything else. I felt pretty good about the responses from the government.
Taylor: Did it change your perspectives of other countries;
Sara T.: Well I already had bad ideas about those countries. I’m a big supporter of Israel, so I just feel like a lot of the Arab countries they harbor terrorists, and this is just sort of something that was probably inevitable. Everybody was in their own little world and not paying attention to it.
Sara: What do you think of the war that’s going on? Do you support it?
Sara T.: I do support the war, I support the war and I don’t like what’s going on with people trying to run for the hills because it’s not exactly turning out maybe the way everybody thought. And I don’t like the way everyone is saying President Bush lied. I think that’s juvenile. I think that everybody looked at the same information and if that information wasn’t correct at the time, that doesn’t mean that Bush lied, it meant that the information was incorrect!
Taylor: What’s your hope of how we come out of the war? How do you think it will be successfully what do you want to see after it ends?
Sara T.: Well I think the only way we’re going to ever be able to leave is if you know the Iraqis themselves you know can stand up and govern themselves and keep the peace themselves and my feeling is that’s going to take a really long time.
Taylor: How did this change your life?
Sara T.: Well, I don’t think my life has really changed that much and I think I’m fortunate for that because a lot of people have been impacted but I do feel very sad about what’s going on in this world now. I’m very sad about all the violence. There just doesn’t seem to be any end to the killing and the fighting. This thing is just dragging and there’s no end in sight and even though I support it I just feel bad about you know what’s going on in the world. It just makes me more pessimistic I guess about the future.
Christine Lauer: Pennsylvania
Sara: Where were you when you first heard about this?
Christine Lauer: I was at work, sitting at my desk.
Taylor: What was your first thought?
Christine: I thought oh my god; we are going to go to war.
Taylor: Really? Right away?
Christine: Right away because I’m a product of the cold war in the 60s. Whenever anything happened there was always that threat of nuclear war that always hung over our head. So whenever anything like this happened, all those memories get dredged up and that’s what I think about.
Taylor: Did this change the U.S. government and how you saw them?
Christine: I feel that the U.S. government is quite divided against itself and I think that there’s a lot of finger pointing and I think there is a lot of blame that needs to be placed and fault that needs to be placed. I feel that until we learn to start working together, and put politics aside, that we’re never, its only brought my opinion of the government more to a head and it hasn’t changed.
Sara: Okay what do you think of the war? Do you support it?
Christine: I have real mixed feelings about it. I feel again, it’s the same kind of thing, where there’s a lot of finger pointing. There’s too much political motivation we don’t have any really great leaders, I can’t fault Bush per say, you have to fault everyone who’s in the government.
Taylor: How did this change your life?
Christine: It makes me more frightened that a pendulum is not going to swing back and that the people who are the fanatics in the Middle East and feel that the afterlife is much better than the life they are living right now are going to kill innocent people again.
Eric Bronk: California
Sara: Where were you when you first heard about the attacks?
Eric Bronk: At home.
Taylor: What was your first thought?
Eric: My first thought was that it was an accident. And when I saw the second plane hit, I knew that it was war.
Sara: Did you know anyone who was in New York when it happened?
Eric: Only indirectly; there are companies we did business with that were in the trade centers.
Taylor: Did it change your perspective on other countries?
Eric: Absolutely. I recognized that we were at war and that certain countries were harboring terrorists that we needed to do everything we could to stop terrorism.
Sara: What do you think of the war? Do you support it?
Eric: Yes. I think it’s a necessary process in our overall global war against terrorism.
Taylor: How did this whole thing change your life?
Eric: I think that we are now in World War III and while I don’t think that the issue of terrorism affects most people individually in a small world sense, I think it changed everyone, it changed my perspective on the risk of living, and a large perspective, I think we are all at risk, and to the extent to be recognized, that has to change life. But we all go about our daily lives and to a great extent at least in our country the risk of terrorism doesn’t affect our daily decisions. And we go about our lives, however philosophically and emotionally I think it has an impact on everyone.
Unedited Interviews
Interviewees:
1.Connie and Bill Stratton: Sara’s grandparents
2.Doug Sutton: Taylor’s ex-neighbor
3.Sara Traberman: Taylor’s mother’s best friend
4.Christine Lauer: Taylor’s mother’s cousin
5.Glenn Palmiere: Taylor’s mother’s brother a.k.a. Taylor’s uncle
6.Eric Bronk: Taylor’s sister’s best friend’s dad
Questions Asked:
1.Where were you when you first heard about the attacks on the twin towers?
2.What was your first thought?
3.Did you fear for your safety?
4.Did you know anyone in New York or the buildings when it happened?
5.How did this change your perspective on…?
-flying
-U.S. government
-other countries
6. What do you think of the war? Do you support it?
7. How did this whole thing change your life?
Connie and Bill Stratton: Colorado originally from New Jersey
Sara Stratton: When or where were you when you first heard about it?
Connie Stratton: I always watch the news from the minute I get up, but for some reason I didn’t. I dressed, and I had to go to the store. I went, and I got in my car and turned on the radio, and the first thing I heard about was President Bush saying, “God bless America.” My god what’s happened I thought, and I had no idea and by the time I got to the store I knew what had happened, and I just was I just was sick to my stomach.
Taylor Schow: Where exactly were you located in New Jersey?
Connie: 35 miles due west of New York City.
Taylor: Wow really close.
Connie: Grandpop where were you?
Bill Stratton: I was home, and I think grandmom came and said something terrible has happened you better get up and watch the TV, and that’s what I did and I was just devastated by what I saw. Very emotional time.
Sara: What were your first thoughts? Anything that ran through your head or that you said right away?
Connie: My first thought was how could anybody any people any idealist no matter where they came from how could anybody kill in such a horrific way. So many innocent people, they weren’t killing soldiers, you know? Something like that. So many innocent people with families, and you know it was just you know an awful way to express their anger whatever their anger was.
Bill: I just felt terrible, I can’t describe to you what kind of emotions I had; they were just so terrible I just felt so bad, and I just really can’t express those feelings.
Sara: Did you fear for your safety at all when you heard about it or even afterwards?
Connie: Yes I did, because we lived so close to New York City, and there was talk at the time about chemical biological things that might be coming. In other words, people feared the worst. And you know, with prevailing winds and if there had been a big chemical or biological devastation in New York City I felt that we might be subjected to that. And to tell you the truth my dear, we have a few cats, and I went out and purchased a cat carrier for each one of my cats so that if anything happened I could jump in the car with grandpa and take off for western New Jersey.
Bill: Well, you know right after that happened there was all sorts of speculation about what else was in the offing. Were they also sending out chemical or biological agents through other people or was some guys carrying a suitcase with a dirty nuclear bomb in it that was going to be exploded? There was all kinds of rumors and speculation going on. Yes, there was concern.
Sara: Did you know anyone who was in New York when it happened or was even on the plane or anything?
Connie: When I grew up in Mattawan, which was about 30 miles south of New York City. We had next door neighbors and she had two children, a boy and a girl. And her husband worked at Wall Street and he still worked at Wall Street and he was late that day, and he lived. Her son went in early because he was very conscientious; he went in early all the time. They never ever found his body. And my sister-in-law knew the woman, and they had memorial services and different things. She told me that the hardest thing she saw was that this mother could not accept her son was dead. It just was devastating.
Sara: I remember you told me that and when I was in New York I looked to see if there was anything in the plaques where they wrote the names, but I called you to see the name but then you guys didn’t answer.
Connie: Oh ok, yeah. She just…he’s not dead. He’s not dead. I mean really, what can you say to her? But she could not accept that her son was dead. Bill did you know anybody?
Bill: No the only person I can think of. There was a Florham Park resident that was involved. But we didn’t know him.
Taylor: Did this change your perspective on anything? Say on flying. Or the US government or other countries…did it change how you thought about them?
Connie: Of course it did. When I had to come out and visit my very sweet granddaughters in California, it was much more of a white knuckle flight, but because I didn’t have to come for 7 or 8 months, by that time, fortunately some safeguards had been put it and I felt a little bit safer. But yes, it really did. One, a little bit later, when I realized the Clinton administration had chances to maybe stop some of this, I was very upset. Two, I was pleased Bush jumped right in. Maybe, I don’t know if he could have done anything more. He really knew after 8 years of Clinton there was a big transition. And today, if I have to come down on losing a tiny bit of my liberties and being alive, I will do it because it’s not anymore like, who is it that said give me liberty OR give me death? Patrick Henry. The world is so different today than when those words were spoken. I can understand those days because it was somebody coming with a rifle to your door and shoot you. Nowadays it’s not that way, it’s much more devastating. I can be killed by someone in another country who sends someone here with a bomb. It’s just so totally different now. I’m saying now I do want my liberties, but if I have to give up a tiny bit of them in order to protect my life and my grandchildren’s life, and my children’s life, I will do that. I won’t give them all up but I will give a little more restrictive power to the government to protect my life.
Bill: I think you summed it up for our view on the U.S. government and as far as our view on a foreign government?
Taylor: Yeah like other countries involvement.
Bill: It was almost impossible not to have negative feelings about where these terrorists were trained or came from, its just human nature. But in time those countries, some of those countries anyways, have stepped up and done things to better the human right of their citizens to be more cooperative with the U.S. on their war on terrorist for example Pakistan and Afghanistan. And hopefully the end result of Iraq will also be positive.
Taylor: What about the war, what are your thoughts? Do you support it or not support it?
Connie: Okay, at first I wasn’t really sure. And I’ve always felt so badly about 2000 plus U.S. personnel have died. And I really feel terrible, but I do know that I do believe that if there is a democracy , if they can establish a democracy in Iraq, that some of the other countries in that area will maybe overthrow their dictators or war Mongol leaders the ones that hate America. So hopefully, basically I guess I think the war will be a good idea if a democracy is established and that region turns around and the best thing is a fourth of the legislature or whatever are going to be women! In other words though, it’s turning the whole region around, to where girls have no education and are sexual slaves, the whole region may turn around because of Iraq and that’s my prayer.
Bill: I at first thought it was a mistake to go to war with Iraq; I think we should have pursued Bin Laden with all their resources that we had, but after a while I saw that it was necessary to get Saddam out of office and then with every atrocity that has happened, the beheadings of innocent men women and children on TV, boasting about it, the regular use of suicide bombers who blow themselves up in the midst of a civilian marketplace, there is no way we should allow that to continue.
Taylor: And this is your last question, overall how did this change your life? Um like moving and stuff like that?
Connie: You know I must tell you, at our age, we kind of, we had my brother in Jersey, but our really close relatives were all west of the Mississippi and it did…as much as I love my home in Jersey, it did make the move easier because I feel a little more safe out here. We are near Denver, but hopefully Denver will be one of the last cities to be hit. So it did make it easier for me in that respect to go ahead and move, but you girls don’t realize, we didn’t grow up with this horrible, horrible crap, you know countries went to war and they fought each other, and that was it. Nobody, nobody, nobody deliberately killed babies, children. In one school, teachers and children were beheaded, this is just insane now. These people now, there is no way you can deal with them; you need to defeat them. You can’t compromise with them, they want our freedom our way of life, gone, they want to rule control, their women, their children, and there is no way with America and their freedom and there is no way for them to fight against that. And that’s what they are fighting, and it’s sad. Grandpop?
Bill: Well there was one thing that you stepped into one thing that you said, there were not women and children killed in the past, Hitler killed women and children.
Connie: Oh yes, yes, and of course I hated him too. But how did it affect you Bill?
Bill: Well it was easy for me to move because I didn’t have any close family like grandmom did. And I like to play golf as well as I could in New Jersey, and it’s better because I never played golf in New Jersey in January and I’ve already been out twice this year.
Connie: But did you take safety into part of it?
Bill: No I can’t really say that.
Connie: I sure did.
Bill: I think it was more that we had to be closer to more of our family members because we were getting old and needed to change someone to change our diapers.
Taylor and Sara: hahahaha.
Doug Sutton: California
Taylor: Where were you when you first heard about it?
Doug Sutton: I was watching television, the financial news station, when the first airplane hit the world trade center. It showed it about 5 minutes after the first plane hit. When the plane hit I believe that it had a news alert on immediately then it showed it very soon thereafter.
Taylor: What was your first thought when it happened when you first saw it?
Doug: I screamed at Sherry to wake up. She was groggy, and she didn’t believe what happened.
Taylor: Did you fear for your safety?
Doug: No
Taylor: Why not?
Doug: Because I’m in California. When the first plane hit the world trade center, it wasn’t clear that it was a terrorist attack. I wasn’t aware for instance that the direction the plane came from would have indicated to anyone who was aware that that was out of the ordinary. But I later heard that no plane normally comes from that direction, which would have told anybody who was watching that this was a problem, but I wasn’t aware of that, like most people, I just said what happened?
Sara: Did you know anyone who was in New York when it happened?
Doug: Yes.
Sara: Who?
Doug: I knew, because of the financial industry, I knew a number of people indirectly and a few directly working at the world trade center.
Sara: Did they get out okay?
Doug: No.
Taylor: Did this change your perspective on flying?
Doug: No.
Taylor: Why not?
Doug: Because it’s such an isolated incident and there was plenty of time before we next flew for the government to take to respond to it as far as safety goes. No, it didn’t bother me at all.
Taylor: Did it change your perspective on the U.S. government or the way you saw other countries or other people?
Doug: I thought that our response was very, very poor and that we definitely needed to do a lot to make ourselves more safe.
Taylor: Like what?
Doug: Like, better control over our security agencies, so they talk to each other better so they process the information one agency has more collectively rather than unilaterally.
Taylor: And did it change your perspective on other countries like Afghanistan?
Doug: No.
Sara: What do you think of the war right now? Do you support it? What are your feelings?
Doug: I don’t like the term war on terrorism because terrorism isn’t something you can have war on because everybody is always against terrorist acts that I know of. Terrorism is just an act used to accomplish a goal, so I’m sure back in the Revolutionary War we were the terrorists because the way we fought the war wasn’t socially acceptable to the British. But I so I don’t have any trouble with fighting extremists anywhere they are in the world but I have tremendous problems with how we are doing it and our approach to it. Did that make any sense to you?
Taylor: Yeah. Just how we were handling going in with force.
Doug: You guys use the term terrorism, all right, if you associate the term terrorism with the extremists who provided tremendous threat to our way of life, if you call the extremists that do that terrorists, then it would seem to me that the first thing you would have to say is to come to an agreement that you cannot fight global extremists unilaterally. Everybody has to agree to fight these people, and every country in the world. Not just one country.
Taylor: Which is us right?
Doug: Yes. That’s a very important starting point is that you cannot successfully fight global extremism unilaterally, you must get the commitment and support of many, many, many other large countries so that you can together come up with a plan that will be accepted by the rest of the free world.
Taylor: So you don’t think that we will come out of this successfully?
Doug: Not until we, absolutely not the way that it’s going, because it’s a unilateral approach. It’s our approach or nothing and as a result in Iraq, for instance where I don’t think we had any right going in the first place, and the real problem there is then that’s its been our way or the highway from the beginning. Did we make is safe after the initial assault? Did we provide the security for even the Iraqis walking the street? What did we do about bringing in other countries and other support systems and for that matter even the Iraqis to redevelop and rebuild Iraq? Did we gain the support of the Iraqis themselves in our efforts to make it their country and bring them back to a healthy environment? And is it in fact even possible to form one country with the pre specific sects that are there now? So no, I don’t think that we have a chance in your lifetime of making a Iraq a safe, special idealistic country that we would respect. And I think the evidence is clear, even the people we have supported in the local elections are not furthering the goals that you or I anybody that I would respect are worthwhile. Plus its women’s rights.
Taylor: So you’d suggest getting better people in office?
Doug: I think that first you have to start with a very basic thesis of what you have to accomplish. The problem is when you deal with things on a national level, its very, very tough Taylor in my opinion to get everybody or get the consensus because each one of us has their own specific opinions. For instance, there were many people who said that Iraq might not have been a tremendous threat to the United States but it was an overwhelming threat to Israel. And Israel deserved our support, therefore, even if they weren’t an imminent threat to us, they were an imminent threat to Israel so lets go get rid of Saddam for that reason alone. Other people said oil, we have to provide enough oil for us to live the way that we live so let’s go do it for that reason. Other reasons said that Hussein is a threat to Turkey and Turkey is the only true democracy, so we have to support Turkey, so numerous people had their own ideas of why we should do it, but what was most important was that nobody would pause long enough so that we could get the support of other countries and share the responsibly for success and commitment with other countries to make it a successful effort, so when it came time to ask the bigger question about can we in fact ever create a democracy, between the Turks, the Shias and the Sunnis, somebody in their right mind would have said this is never going to happen and they would say lets try and do something else, let’s create another form of government. Well perhaps they each live in an independent country, but they all get rights to the oil, but whatever the solution would have been, it would have been a better solution has we gone for bigger consensus and certainly one that would have offered better opportunities for success.
Sara: So what’s your reason?
Doug: My reason for what?
Sara: For just going to war, supporting the war.
Doug: I don’t support the efforts to go in initially for war. I’m an old man now, I remember the Gulf and in Vietnam, it was clearly obvious from before we went to war that we had no reason going into Iraq. It was not an imminent threat to us, and that’s the only reason that justified doing it. If we did go into it, it was certainly very irrational to go into with an army from the United States, because you are never going to get the commitment of the society. If very few people in the society have to pay the price, for the cost of war, whether it’s physically or monetarily, so I just think it was a terrible, terrible idea implemented terribly and those two terribles make it very tough to get a positive in the end.
Taylor: Yeah.
Taylor: How did this change your life? Like the attack, all this all these things in the past few years?
Doug: It made me more cynical towards politicians.
Taylor: Okay. That’s it.
Doug: Make sense?
Taylor: Yeah, yeah that’s good.
Doug: So what do you do about it? You can’t just walk around being cynical all the time. What do you do?
Taylor: Act?
Doug: How?
Taylor: Against the politicians?
Doug: Well I don’t know how you act against the politicians except to get involved in some level. And that’s for instance where Sherry worked very hard in the city of Costa Mesa; to elect the people who you believe will represent the interest that you hold very important at some level. That’s one thing you can do about it. Another thing you can do about it is study your heads off and say you know what? I’m a teenager now, I have my hands full, and by the way I can’t vote yet anyway.
Sara: I like that one. Hahahaha.
Doug: What you can do is better prepare yourself to understand how people argue, how arguments are made, and be ready to act independently in response to arguments of all sides so that you can learn how to form your own opinions that’s based on the education that we all hold so dearly. And that is most important, because if you hope in this interview process you’ll interview enough people so that you two will be able to form an opinion on what you hold dear and what you think might have been a better way to approach it or a better way to get out of it or a more conclusive way to form a consensus in whatever decision is made. So the decision right now and this is very important I think, is not why we got in there, it’s what the heck do we do now that we’re there? I still think it comes back to the same question; is you have to somehow get enough people to get an interest so that they all have something at stake and can all win from the result and we’ll all lose if the result is not achieved. In short, you have to get people to make more of a commitment. But I think its wonderful questions you asked, and for a very short interview, I hope you guys can come up with some type of idea. I don’t know what you’re going to do with it, but I would hope the results of your efforts is for you two to form an opinion on how old people think and what you can do better in 20 years. How it works is for you guys to do better in 20 years. I mentioned something to you before that’s very, very important. The very beginning of the Vietnam War, when we truly upgraded the amount of commitment we made, we were fighting over there for 4 or 5 years in very small numbers, the reason for going to war was something called the Gulf of Tonkin…. Bay Incident, where it was asserted that somebody shot on one of our ships, somebody attacked one of our ships.
Taylor: And they hadn’t right?
Doug: That’s very right, they didn’t. What’s so important about it was there was an independent muckraker who wrote a daily paper in Washington DC, a weekly paper and his name was I.S Stone, Izzy Stone, and he was an independent journalist who used to go out and get the stories himself, go home, set the type, and print up this independent newsletter and he published it weekly in Washington DC on the goings on of our politicians and what was really happening in Congress and he published that very same week that the Gulf of Tonkin happened that it was a fiasco, that it was a lie, that the incident never took place, and it was just political justification for committing us to an unjust war. The vote to go to war was 98: 2 I believe or 99: 1 in our US Senate. After that came out, and the summary of his statement in that article was all you have to do is go look in the Congressional record and you will see that this is a lie, because history doesn’t support the action. Izzy Stone, a very famous, very independent individual newspaper man, who started his own newspaper and printed this and built himself up to a very, very respectable subscription, number of subscribers to his newspaper and the fact is then that even knowing this, people went along because it was the political accepted thing to do. And it was terrible. So now here we have, we are arguing 40 years later, almost 40 years later that Iraq was necessary, but folks guess what, not for the reason that we said. So here we are, and how do we get out of it? Well we got out of Vietnam in a terrible, terrible way, nobody won anything from it. Kind of like “we spent all the money, lets just go home now” and all of the people who made tremendous individual commitment that deserve tremendous respect from everybody in this country and honor all the soldiers that made the commitment, what happened to them? Well my friends that came home from the war, had experiences like they were spit on at airports, actually spit on. People weren’t mad at them, they were mad at the politicians, but they didn’t have anyway any education or any experience that would allow them to voice their opposition in a way that they could be heard. So that’s what has to happen in the future is if you guys take this argument that you’re developing and say what can the difference be in the future, how can we change the system or educate the people enough so that they will be aware that what we are doing will only work if most of us agree ahead of time what the costs are. So that’s a long story for a nickel, but I hope you guys understand. Very, very important for you to come up with some type of summary what your opinions are and to be able to support those opinions with information you have gotten back and information you aren’t getting back. Remember guys, you Taylor and you also Sara, are looking at this from an entirely different perspective. You aren’t reading the same things I’m reading, looking at the same information I am, you’re listening to your parents and your teachers who I have no input from. So it’s up to you guys to come up with some conclusion or some opinion about what you think can be learned from this mess and how we can best deal with it and how you can best deal with it individually and collectively. I wish you luck with it. When I was a senior in high school no sorry a freshman in high school, our high school put on a mock debate on the Vietnam War and how we did it was we sent one person a guy named Ray Morris who was a congress man from Oregon I believe, opposed the entire going into Vietnam, and he was one out of the very few, and Richard Nixon supported him. And what we did was, we had a mock election between the two in the school and it allowed everybody to debate both sides of the issue, is who would you vote for? And it’s a wonderful idea. Anything that you’re doing this way but most importantly your ability at the end of this thing to convince your classmates and your teacher of your side of the argument is what it’s all about. Your points not mine.
Taylor: Yeah.
Doug: And if I can help you anymore, I would be glad to. And I thank you for including me in your interview and I hope my answers were enough to at least give you an idea. Take care Sara. Bye kids.
Sara Traberman: New Jersey
Sara: Where were you when you first heard about it?
Sara Traberman: I was actually home, because at that time I was not working. Actually no, I correct that, I was at the gym. I was on the treadmill and I remember everybody was sort of looking at the TV, and people were talking about, that there was an accident with a plane and everything and I got off the treadmill and I was watching the TV and all of a sudden I saw, because somebody actually taped that second plane hitting the thing and as soon as I saw that, I left the gym. That’s where I was.
Taylor: Okay. What was your first thought when you saw it? What was the first thought that came to your mind?
Sara T.: I was completely horrified. And shocked.
Taylor: Yeah.
Taylor: Did you fear for your safety?
Sara T.: Right at that point, no. Because I didn’t really understand the full intent of what was going on. You know I still thought maybe it was still an accident.
Taylor: Yeah, not an attack on the United States or anything.
Sara T.: Right.
Taylor: How far away do you live from New York?
Sara T.: We’re about 20 miles from New York.
Taylor: So pretty close.
Sara T.: Pretty close. Actually, you can see New York from certain parts of the town because it’s kind of on a little hill mountain hill thing. You can see the skyline.
Taylor: So you could see the twin towers?
Sara T.: Well you could definitely see the big smoke for a long time after that. I think it was maybe two or three weeks after that. There was a big hazy black cloud that was there, and it took a long time for it to dissipate.
Sara: Yeah. Did you know anyone who was in New York when it happened?
Sara T.: Well, my husband was in New York, he works midtown. You know the twin towers were downtown so there’s that distinction. So he was midtown. I mean I know a lot of friends who work in the city and things like that. Nobody I know live there, but a lot of people I know work there.
Taylor: Did you fear for your husband’s safety?
Sara T.: Yeah, you know I was worried because you know I don’t think they were clear about how everybody was going to get home, and there was talk about bridges possibly getting attacked. Manhattan is an island and to come back to New Jersey you either have to go over a bridge or go through a tunnel. Lots of different options but I know they were on the news because nobody really knew how far this was going to go or what else might happen. So I was pretty nervous and I think cell phone service was kind of spotty. I think I emailed him or he emailed me. He had a blackberry.
Taylor: So he was ok?
Sara T.: Yeah, yeah he was ok.
Taylor: How did this change your perspective on flying?
Sara T.: You know it really didn’t. It just became more of an inconvenience with all the additional security and stuff like that but I didn’t decide like ok I’m not going to fly anymore because this thing happened. You know the thing that scared me more was that Unabomber guy or that not the Unabomber guy, the shoe bomber guy. That thing kind of scared me more. I mean that thing had nothing to do with 9/11. It didn’t really change the way I felt about flying.
Sara: Did it change your perspective on the way you saw the US government? Or did you like the way they handled the situation or not handled the situation?
Sara T.: I felt very, very proud of the way that Rudy Giuliani handled it, he was the mayor at the time, and I thought he did a really good job like keeping everybody calm and things like that. And I thought you know I thought everybody sort of rallied around it and I felt like it was time where there wasn’t all this bickering between democrats and republicans and everything else. I really felt like the country came together and I felt pretty good about like all the responses and everything because really, it was such a thing that really never had happened before. And who knew how to respond, but you know I felt pretty good about the responses from the government.
Taylor: And did it change your perspectives of other countries; say like Iraq or Afghanistan or where the terrorists were from?
Sara T.: Well I already had bad ideas about those countries. You know, I’m a big supporter of Israel, so I just feel like a lot of the Arab countries they harbor terrorists, and you know, this is just sort of something that was probably inevitable. And that you know everybody was in their own little world and not paying attention to it, but you know Israel is under attack everyday, and I was pretty familiar with…
Sara: What do you think of the war that’s going on? Do you support it?
Sara T.: I do support the war, I support the war and I don’t like what’s going on with people trying to run for the hills because it’s not exactly turning out maybe the way everybody thought. And I don’t like the way everyone is saying President Bush lied, you know I think that’s juvenile. I think that everybody looked at the same information and if that information wasn’t correct at the time, that doesn’t mean that Bush lied, it meant that the information was incorrect! I do support the war, and I think it’s horrible that you know all these people are dying and all these civilians are dying and you know the troops are dying but I still support it.
Taylor: What’s your hope of how we come out of the war? How do you think it will be successfully what do you want to see after it ends?
Sara T.: Well I think the only way we’re going to ever be able to leave is if you know the Iraqis themselves you know can stand up and self govern and get a grip on all the factions that are stabilizing the country right now. And you know I think that the Iraqis have proven that they really do want a democracy right now, but it’s these people that I guess fear democracy because then they’re not going to have the same powers anymore. I think those are the people that are really messed up and there a lot of different groups that are doing it and it’s really kind of a mess over there but I think the one incredible thing has been is that the Iraqi people every time there was an election they go and they vote and they’re under attack and they’re under threats and things like that. And I think you know the people are going to have to be able to govern themselves and keep the peace themselves and my feeling is that’s going to take a really long time.
Taylor: How did this change your life like overall in anyway?
Sara T.: What, 9/11?
Taylor: Yeah 9/11 and this war that’s going on.
Sara T.: Well actually I should tell you that you know when I answered that question about traveling I guess I forgot that I actually had a trip planned to Switzerland in February of ’03 and that was right before the war started, and I decided not to go. I pulled out of the trip; for other reasons too but that was a big reason I didn’t want to be in Switzerland with a war starting. I was afraid I might not be able to get home. So I guess it didn’t really have to do with 9/11 it was more the war. I’m sorry what was the question?
Taylor: How did this change your life, this whole event in history?
Sara T.: Well, I don’t think my life has really changed that much you know and I think I’m fortunate for that because a lot of people have been impacted but I do feel very sad about what’s going on in this world now. I’m very sad about all the violence and you know the fact that the Middle East and Arab countries. There doesn’t seem to be any end to the killing and the fighting and so I mean I’m just more pessimistic I guess maybe then I was you know five or ten years ago about the future. You know, because things like the Gulf War in the beginnings of the 90s you know that war was like over in I don’t know three or four months and then went Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and we went in there and got him out. You know those wars were over pretty quickly. They were barely even wars. This thing is just dragging and there’s no end in sight and even though I support it I just feel bad about you know what’s going on in the world. It just makes me more pessimistic I guess about the future.
Christine Lauer: Pennsylvania
Sara: Where were you when you first heard about this?
Christine Lauer: I was at work, sitting at my desk.
Taylor: What was your first thought?
Christine: I thought oh my god; we are going to go to war.
Taylor: Really? Right away?
Christine: Right away because I’m a product of the cold war in the 60s. Whenever anything happened there was always that threat of nuclear war that always hung over our head. So whenever anything like this happened, all those memories get dredged up and that’s what I think about.
Taylor: Did you fear for your safety?
Christine: Personal safety? No.
Taylor: Whose safety then if not yours?
Christine: I feared for the people who were in large cities.
Taylor: Yeah, okay.
Sara: Did you anybody in New York when it happened?
Christine: No I did not.
Taylor: Did this change you perspective on flying?
Christine: No it did not.
Taylor: What about the U.S. government and how you saw them?
Christine: I feel that the U.S. government is quite divided against itself and I think that there’s a lot of finger pointing and I think there is a lot of blame that needs to be placed and a lot of fault that needs to be placed and I feel that until we learn to start working together, and put politics aside, that we’re never, its only brought my opinion of the government more to a head and it hasn’t changed.
Taylor: Okay. Did it change your perspective on how you saw other countries say Afghanistan and them?
Christine: I feel sorrier for the people who live there.
Sara: Okay what do you think of the war? Do you support it?
Christine: I have real mixed feelings about it. I feel again, it’s the same kind of thing, where there’s a lot of finger pointing. There’s too much political motivation we don’t have any really great leaders, um I can’t fault Bush per say, you have to fault everyone who’s in the government. They are complaining about the fact that we have no security and that the 9/11 commission, nothing has changed, and yet every time we try to make a move to change anything, and put more security measures in place, then we are told we are violating civil rights so its just another point in how we are fighting against each other.
Taylor: How did this change your life?
Christine: It makes me more frightened that our pendulum is not going to swing back and that the people who are the fanatics in the Middle East and feel that the afterlife is much better than the life they are living right now are going to kill innocent people again.
Taylor: Well, that’s all the questions we have.
Christine: Oh, okay. See I told you I was very opinionated! Alright well I’ll let you get on to your other stuff. It was wonderful talking to you.
Glenn Palmiere: Florida
Sara: Where were you when you first heard about it?
Glenn Palmiere: I was in Tallahassee, Florida in a meeting.
Taylor: What was your first thought?
Glenn: Well my first thought was that I thought that someone had an accident and you know, it was a small plane that flew into the world trade center because the first report that came out was that a plane had flown into the world trade center so I thought that it was just an accident.
Sara: Did you fear for your safety after you found out what it really was?
Glenn: I didn’t fear for my safety because I was so far away from New York City.
Taylor: Did you know anyone in New York when it happened?
Glenn: Yes I did know a good friend of mine was in New York City on business when it occurred.
Sara: Was your friend okay?
Glenn: Yes they were okay; they were able to get out of the city. What happened was they were not able to fly home and they tried to rent a car and what they essentially had to do was to get on a bus with a whole bunch of other people and get back to Texas and it took them seven days to do it.
Taylor: Oh my gosh…Did this change your perspective on flying at all?
Glenn: The only reason it changed my perspective on flying is that it is a big inconvenience now to fly because of all the security checks and it becomes a big hassle to travel now.
Sara: Did it change your perspective on the U.S. government or the way you saw they handled the situation?
Glenn: No not really because I didn’t think they really could have done anything to prevent it from happening. When you have extremists they’ll do things to find a way to cause havoc, so.
Taylor: Did it change your perspective on other countries, like Afghanistan or anything?
Glenn: No because it was just 9 individuals who did it, it wasn’t the country that did it.
Taylor: Yeah. What do you think of the war? Do you support it?
Glenn: I do support the war. I think that if we do not take some kind of action to prevent things like this from happening in the future, that we will be living in state of chaos so I do support the war.
Sara: How did this change your life?
Glenn: It makes me wake up to travel and makes me think that if there’s an option to drive, I will drive before I will fly just because of the inconvenience.
Taylor: That’s it.
Glenn: That’s all the questions?
Taylor: Yeah.
Glenn: Will you tell me if I got any right or wrong?
Taylor: No.
Eric Bronk: California
Sara: Where were you when you first heard about the attacks?
Eric Bronk: At home.
Taylor: What was your first thought?
Eric: My first thought was that it was an accident. And when I saw the second plane hit, I knew that it was war.
Taylor: Did you fear for your safety?
Eric: Not personally, no.
Sara: Did you know anyone who was in New York when it happened?
Eric: In the buildings or in New York?
Taylor and Sara: In the buildings and in New York?
Eric: Only Indirectly I do business; there are companies we did business with that were in the trade centers.
Taylor: Oh okay. Did this change your perspective on flying?
Eric: No.
Sara: Did it change you perspective on the U.S. government? Or did you like the way they handled things?
Eric: On the U.S. government or the administration?
Taylor: Whichever.
Eric: It’s really two different questions, but no that particular event did not change my opinion of the government or the administration.
Taylor: Did it change your perspective on other countries?
Eric: Absolutely.
Taylor: How did it change your perspective?
Eric: I recognized that we were at war and that certain countries were harboring terrorists that we needed to do everything we could to stop terrorism.
Sara: What do you think of the war? Do you support it?
Eric: Yes.
Sara: Why?
Eric: I think it’s a necessary process in our overall global war against terrorism.
Taylor: How did this whole thing change your life?
Eric: I think that we are now in World War III and while I don’t think that the issue of terrorism affects most people individually in a small world sense, I think it changed everyone, it changed my perspective on the risk of living, and a large perspective, I think we are all at risk, and to the extent to be recognized, that has to change life. But we all go about our daily lives and to a great extent at least in our country the risk of terrorism doesn’t affect our daily decisions. And we go about our lives, however philosophically and emotionally I think it has an impact on everyone.
Introduction
Podcast & Interview Transcripts
Our Project
Since 9-11 we have become aware of many changes in today’s society. The government has tightened airport security all over the U.S., politicians use it to influence and manipulate their listeners, and there is a lot more national pride. We feel that traveling has been made harder because of the increase in security, and it is just a hassle these days to wait at the airport for 3 hours before your flight in order to get through all the checkpoints. We also feel that many politicians use the attacks to get sympathetic votes from their listeners; they bring them up and refer to the past in order to see how far we’ve come since then and how much farther we can go in the future. We feel that there is more pride in being an American now, because after the attacks everyone worked together to help get New York City back to working order and everyone mourned for those that were lost that day, even if they did not know anyone who died; everyone supported each other and America was unbeatable after that. It really brought the country together. It just makes us sad that it took something so horrific for everyone to realize that we are not in a protected bubble, that we are just as vulnerable as some third world countries, and we need to work together to come up with a solution to defeat terrorism absolutely.We really liked the idea of the project when we first heard about it, but we were frightened that we wouldn’t be able to ask questions that our interviewees would connect to; we wanted them to be able to let go emotionally and give us deep answers. We were also frightened that there would be awkward moments in the interviews because this topic is so delicate and new to most people, but we found out that a lot of people did not mind sharing their ideas. We got some really good insight to people’s thoughts and reasons for things, and we felt that we were able to connect to them and understand where they were coming from. We took all of their thoughts, and from them we were able to start forming our own opinions on this tragedy and the war.
Overall, we were able to understand the events of 9-11 and the ongoing war from many different perspectives. We were able to take the many opinions and develop ideas on our own, prompting us to continue a discussion with each other on the war and 9-11 after the interviews were over. We thought that it was a great project and a wonderful experience!
Edited Interviews
Click here to listen to the best podcast ever!!
Interviewees:
1.Connie and Bill Stratton: Sara’s grandparents
2.Doug Sutton: Taylor’s ex-neighbor
3.Sara Traberman: Taylor’s mother’s best friend
4.Christine Lauer: Taylor’s mother’s cousin
5.Eric Bronk: Taylor’s sister’s best friend’s dad
Questions Asked:
1.Where were you when you first heard about the attacks on the twin towers?
2.What was your first thought?
3.Did you fear for your safety?
4.Did you know anyone in New York or the buildings when it happened?
5.How did this change your perspective on…?
-flying
-U.S. government
-other countries
6. What do you think of the war? Do you support it?
7. How did this whole thing change your life?
Connie and Bill Stratton:
Colorado originally from New Jersey
Sara Stratton: Where were you when you first heard about it?
Connie Stratton: I always watch the news from the minute I get up, but for some reason I didn’t. I got in my car and turned on the radio, and the first thing I heard about was President Bush saying, “God bless America,” and I thought, “My god what’s happened?” I had no idea and by the time I got to the store I knew what had happened.
Taylor Schow: Where exactly were you located in New Jersey?
Connie: 35 miles due west of New York City.
Sara: What were your first thoughts?
Connie: My first thought was how could anybody any people any idealist no matter where they came from kill in such a horrific way. So many innocent people, they weren’t killing soldiers, you know? So many innocent people with families, it just was an awful way to express their anger whatever their anger was.
Bill: I can’t describe to you what kind of emotions I had; they were just so terrible, and I just really can’t express those feelings.
Sara: Did you fear for your safety at all when you heard about it?
Connie: Yes I did, because we lived so close to New York City, and there was talk at the time about chemical biological things that might be coming. People feared the worst. With prevailing winds and if there had been a big chemical or biological devastation in New York City I felt that we might be subjected to some of that.
Taylor: Did this change your perspective on anything? Say on flying. Or the US government or other countries?
Connie: Of course. One, a little bit later, when I realized that the Clinton administration had chances to maybe stop some of this, I was very upset. Two, I was pleased Bush jumped right in. He really knew after 8 years of Clinton there was a big transition. And today, if I have to come down on losing a tiny bit of my liberties and being alive, I will do it in order to protect my life and my grandchildren’s life, and my children’s life, I will do that. I won’t give them all up but I will give a little more restrictive power to the government to protect my life.
Bill: It was almost impossible not to have negative feelings about where these terrorists were trained or came from, its just human nature.
Taylor: What about the war? Do you support it or not support it?
Connie: Okay, at first I wasn’t really sure. And I’ve always felt so badly about 2000 plus U.S. personnel have died. And I really feel terrible, but basically I guess I think the war will be a good idea if a democracy is established. The whole region may turn around because of Iraq and that’s my prayer.
Bill: I at first thought it was a mistake to go to war with Iraq; I thought that we should have pursued Bin Laden with all the resources that we had, but after a while I saw that it was necessary to get Saddam out of office and then with every atrocity, the beheadings of innocent men women and children on TV, boasting about it, the regular use of suicide bombers; there is no way that we should allow that to continue.
Taylor: Overall how did this change your life?
Connie: You know I must tell you, as much as I love my home in Jersey, it did make the move easier because I feel a little more safe out here. We are near Denver, but hopefully Denver will be one of the last cities to be hit. So it did make it easier for me in that respect to go ahead and move, you know you girls don’t realize, we didn’t grow up with this horrible, horrible crap, you know countries went to war and they fought each other, and that was it. Nobody, nobody, nobody deliberately killed babies, children; this is just insane right now. These people now, there is no way you can deal with them; you’re going to have to defeat them. They want our freedom our way of life, gone. And that’s what they are fighting, they’re fighting the freedom of people, and that’s sad.
Bill: I think it was more that we had to be closer to more of our family members because we were getting old and needed somebody to change our diapers.
Taylor and Sara: hahahaha.
Doug Sutton:
California
Taylor: Where were you when you first heard about it?
Doug Sutton: I was watching the television, financial news station, when the first airplane hit the world trade center. It showed it about 5 minutes after the first plane hit. When the plane hit I believe that it had a news alert on immediately then it showed it very soon thereafter.
Taylor: Did you fear for your safety?
Doug: No, because I’m in California. When the first plane hit the first world trade center, it wasn’t clear that it was a terrorist attack. I wasn’t aware for instance that the direction that plane came from would have indicated to anybody that that was out of the ordinary. No plane normally comes from that direction, which would have told anybody who was watching that this is a problem, like most people, I just said what happened?
Sara: Did you know anyone who was in New York when it happened?
Doug: Yes, because I’m in the financial industry, I knew a number of people indirectly and a few directly who were working at the world trade center.
Taylor: Did this change your perspective on flying?
Doug: No, because it’s such an isolated incident and there was plenty of time before we next flew for the government to respond to it as far as safety goes.
Taylor: Did it change your perspective on the U.S. government?
Doug: I thought that our response was very, very poor and that we definitely needed to do a lot to make ourselves more safe.
Taylor: Like what?
Doug: Like, better control over our security agencies, so they talk to each other better so that they process the information one agency has more collectively rather than unilaterally.
Sara: What do you think of the war right now? Do you support it? What are your feelings?
Doug: I don’t like the term war on terrorism because terrorism isn’t anybody that you can have war on because everybody is always against terrorist acts that I know of. Terrorism is just an act used to accomplish a goal. So I don’t have any trouble with fighting extremists anywhere they are in the world but I have tremendous problems with how we are doing it and our approach to it. You guys use the term terrorism, all right, if you associate the term terrorism with the extremists who provided tremendous threat to our country and our way of life, if you call the extremists that do that terrorists, then it would seem to me that the first thing you would have to do is to say is to come to an agreement that you cannot successfully fight global extremism unilaterally. You must get the commitment and support of many, many, many other large countries so that you can together come up with a plan that will be accepted by the rest of the free world.
Taylor: So you don’t think that we will come out of this successfully?
Doug: Absolutely not the way that it’s going, because it’s a unilateral approach. It’s our approach or nothing. Did we make is safe after the initial assault? Did we provide the security for even the Iraqis walking the street? What did we do about bringing in other countries and other support systems and for that matter even the Iraqis to redevelop and rebuild Iraq? Did we gain the support of the Iraqis themselves in our efforts to make it their country and bring them back to a healthy environment? And is it in fact even possible to form one country with the pre specific sects that are there now? So no, I don’t think that we have a chance in your lifetime of making Iraq a safe, special idealistic country that we would respect. I think that first you have to start with a very basic thesis about what you want to accomplish. The problem is when you deal with things on a national level, its very, very tough Taylor in my opinion to get everybody or get the consensus because each one of us has their own specific opinions. For instance, there were many people who said that Iraq might not have been a tremendous threat to the United States but it was an overwhelming threat to Israel. And Israel deserved our support, therefore, even if they weren’t an imminent threat to us, they were an imminent threat to Israel so lets go get rid of Hussein for that reason alone. Other people said oil, we have to provide enough oil for us to live the way that we live so let’s go do it for that reason. Other reasons said that Hussein is a threat to Turkey and Turkey is the only true democracy in the area, so we have to support Turkey, so numerous people had their own ideas on why we should do it, but what was most important is that nobody would pause long enough so that we could get the support of other countries and to share the responsibly for success and commitment with other countries to make it a successful effort, so when it came time to ask the bigger question right upfront about can we in fact ever create a democracy, between the Turks, the Shias and the Sunnis, somebody in their right mind would have said this is never going to happen and they would say lets try and do something else, let’s create another form of government. Well perhaps they each live in an independent country, but they all get rights to the assets from the oil, but whatever the solution would have been, it would have been a better solution has we gone for bigger consensus and certainly one that would have offered better opportunities for success. I don’t support the efforts to go in initially for war. I’m an old man now. It was clearly obvious from before we went to war that we had no reason going into Iraq. It was not an imminent threat to us, and that’s the only reason that justified doing it. If we did go into it, it was certainly very irrational to go into with an army from the United States, because you are never going to get the commitment of the society. If very few people in the society have to pay the price, for the cost of war, whether it’s physical or monetarily, so I just think it was a terrible, terrible idea implemented terribly and those two terribles make it very tough to get a positive in the end.
Taylor: How did this change your life?
Doug: It made me more cynical towards our politicians. So what do you do about it? I mean you can’t just walk around being cynical all the time. What do you do?
Taylor: Act?
Doug: How?
Taylor: Against the politicians?
Doug: Well I don’t know how you act against the politicians except to get involved in some level. And that’s for instance where Sherry worked very hard in the city of Costa Mesa; to elect the people who you believe will represent the interest that you hold very important at some level. That’s one thing you can do about it. Another thing that you can do about it; you study your heads off and say you know what? I’m a teenager now, I have my hands full, and by the way I can’t vote yet anyway.
Sara: I like that one. Hahahaha.
Doug: What you can do is better prepare yourself to understand how people argue, how arguments are made, and be ready to act independently in response to arguments of all sides so that you can learn how to form your own opinions that’s based upon the education that we all hold so dearly. So the decision right now is not why we got in there, it’s what the heck do we do now that we’re there? I still think it comes back to the same question; is you have to somehow get enough people to get a vested interest so that they all have something at stake and can all win from the result and we’ll all lose if the result is not achieved. In short, you have to get people to make more of a commitment. Remember guys, you Taylor and you also Sara, you’re looking at this from an entirely different perspective. You aren’t reading the same things I’m reading, looking at the same information I am, you’re listening to your parents and your teachers who I have no input from. So it’s up to you guys to come up with some conclusion or some opinion about what you think can be learned from this mess and how we can best deal with it and how you can best deal with it individually and collectively
Sara Traberman:
New Jersey
Sara: Where were you when you first heard about it?
Sara Traberman: I was at the gym. I remember everybody was sort of looking at the TV, and people were talking about, that there was an accident with a plane and everything and I got off the treadmill and I was watching the TV and I saw, because that second plane hitting the thing and as soon as I saw that, I left the gym.
Taylor: What was your first thought when you saw it?
Sara T.: I was completely horrified, and shocked.
Taylor: How far away do you live from New York?
Sara T.: We’re about 20 miles from New York. Actually, you can see New York from certain parts of the town because it’s kind of on a little hill mountain hill thing. You can see the skyline.
Taylor: So you could see the twin towers?
Sara T.: Well you could definitely see the big smoke for a long time after that. I think it was maybe two or three weeks after that. There was a big hazy black cloud that was there, and it took a long time for it to sort of dissipate.
Sara: Did you know anyone who was in New York when it happened?
Sara T.: Well, my husband was in New York, he works midtown. You know the twin towers were downtown so there’s that distinction, but he was midtown. I was worried because I don’t think they were clear about how everybody was going to get home, and there was talk about bridges possibly getting attacked. Manhattan is an island and to come back to New Jersey you either have to go over a bridge or go through a tunnel. So I was pretty nervous and I think cell phone service was kind of spotty. I think I emailed him or he emailed me.
Taylor: How did this change your perspective on flying?
Sara T.: You know it really didn’t. It just became more of an inconvenience with all the additional security and stuff like that. You know the thing that scared me more was that Unabomber guy or that not the Unabomber guy, the shoe bomber guy.
Sara: Did it change your perspective on the way you saw the US government?
Sara T.: I felt very, very proud of the way that Rudy Giuliani handled it, he was the mayor at the time, and I thought he did a really good job like keeping everybody calm. I thought everybody sort of rallied around it and I felt like it was time where there wasn’t all this bickering between democrats and republicans and everything else. I felt pretty good about the responses from the government.
Taylor: Did it change your perspectives of other countries;
Sara T.: Well I already had bad ideas about those countries. I’m a big supporter of Israel, so I just feel like a lot of the Arab countries they harbor terrorists, and this is just sort of something that was probably inevitable. Everybody was in their own little world and not paying attention to it.
Sara: What do you think of the war that’s going on? Do you support it?
Sara T.: I do support the war, I support the war and I don’t like what’s going on with people trying to run for the hills because it’s not exactly turning out maybe the way everybody thought. And I don’t like the way everyone is saying President Bush lied. I think that’s juvenile. I think that everybody looked at the same information and if that information wasn’t correct at the time, that doesn’t mean that Bush lied, it meant that the information was incorrect!
Taylor: What’s your hope of how we come out of the war? How do you think it will be successfully what do you want to see after it ends?
Sara T.: Well I think the only way we’re going to ever be able to leave is if you know the Iraqis themselves you know can stand up and govern themselves and keep the peace themselves and my feeling is that’s going to take a really long time.
Taylor: How did this change your life?
Sara T.: Well, I don’t think my life has really changed that much and I think I’m fortunate for that because a lot of people have been impacted but I do feel very sad about what’s going on in this world now. I’m very sad about all the violence. There just doesn’t seem to be any end to the killing and the fighting. This thing is just dragging and there’s no end in sight and even though I support it I just feel bad about you know what’s going on in the world. It just makes me more pessimistic I guess about the future.
Christine Lauer:
Pennsylvania
Sara: Where were you when you first heard about this?
Christine Lauer: I was at work, sitting at my desk.
Taylor: What was your first thought?
Christine: I thought oh my god; we are going to go to war.
Taylor: Really? Right away?
Christine: Right away because I’m a product of the cold war in the 60s. Whenever anything happened there was always that threat of nuclear war that always hung over our head. So whenever anything like this happened, all those memories get dredged up and that’s what I think about.
Taylor: Did this change the U.S. government and how you saw them?
Christine: I feel that the U.S. government is quite divided against itself and I think that there’s a lot of finger pointing and I think there is a lot of blame that needs to be placed and fault that needs to be placed. I feel that until we learn to start working together, and put politics aside, that we’re never, its only brought my opinion of the government more to a head and it hasn’t changed.
Sara: Okay what do you think of the war? Do you support it?
Christine: I have real mixed feelings about it. I feel again, it’s the same kind of thing, where there’s a lot of finger pointing. There’s too much political motivation we don’t have any really great leaders, I can’t fault Bush per say, you have to fault everyone who’s in the government.
Taylor: How did this change your life?
Christine: It makes me more frightened that a pendulum is not going to swing back and that the people who are the fanatics in the Middle East and feel that the afterlife is much better than the life they are living right now are going to kill innocent people again.
Eric Bronk:
California
Sara: Where were you when you first heard about the attacks?
Eric Bronk: At home.
Taylor: What was your first thought?
Eric: My first thought was that it was an accident. And when I saw the second plane hit, I knew that it was war.
Sara: Did you know anyone who was in New York when it happened?
Eric: Only indirectly; there are companies we did business with that were in the trade centers.
Taylor: Did it change your perspective on other countries?
Eric: Absolutely. I recognized that we were at war and that certain countries were harboring terrorists that we needed to do everything we could to stop terrorism.
Sara: What do you think of the war? Do you support it?
Eric: Yes. I think it’s a necessary process in our overall global war against terrorism.
Taylor: How did this whole thing change your life?
Eric: I think that we are now in World War III and while I don’t think that the issue of terrorism affects most people individually in a small world sense, I think it changed everyone, it changed my perspective on the risk of living, and a large perspective, I think we are all at risk, and to the extent to be recognized, that has to change life. But we all go about our daily lives and to a great extent at least in our country the risk of terrorism doesn’t affect our daily decisions. And we go about our lives, however philosophically and emotionally I think it has an impact on everyone.
Unedited Interviews
Interviewees:
1.Connie and Bill Stratton: Sara’s grandparents
2.Doug Sutton: Taylor’s ex-neighbor
3.Sara Traberman: Taylor’s mother’s best friend
4.Christine Lauer: Taylor’s mother’s cousin
5.Glenn Palmiere: Taylor’s mother’s brother a.k.a. Taylor’s uncle
6.Eric Bronk: Taylor’s sister’s best friend’s dad
Questions Asked:
1.Where were you when you first heard about the attacks on the twin towers?
2.What was your first thought?
3.Did you fear for your safety?
4.Did you know anyone in New York or the buildings when it happened?
5.How did this change your perspective on…?
-flying
-U.S. government
-other countries
6. What do you think of the war? Do you support it?
7. How did this whole thing change your life?
Connie and Bill Stratton:
Colorado originally from New Jersey
Sara Stratton: When or where were you when you first heard about it?
Connie Stratton: I always watch the news from the minute I get up, but for some reason I didn’t. I dressed, and I had to go to the store. I went, and I got in my car and turned on the radio, and the first thing I heard about was President Bush saying, “God bless America.” My god what’s happened I thought, and I had no idea and by the time I got to the store I knew what had happened, and I just was I just was sick to my stomach.
Taylor Schow: Where exactly were you located in New Jersey?
Connie: 35 miles due west of New York City.
Taylor: Wow really close.
Connie: Grandpop where were you?
Bill Stratton: I was home, and I think grandmom came and said something terrible has happened you better get up and watch the TV, and that’s what I did and I was just devastated by what I saw. Very emotional time.
Sara: What were your first thoughts? Anything that ran through your head or that you said right away?
Connie: My first thought was how could anybody any people any idealist no matter where they came from how could anybody kill in such a horrific way. So many innocent people, they weren’t killing soldiers, you know? Something like that. So many innocent people with families, and you know it was just you know an awful way to express their anger whatever their anger was.
Bill: I just felt terrible, I can’t describe to you what kind of emotions I had; they were just so terrible I just felt so bad, and I just really can’t express those feelings.
Sara: Did you fear for your safety at all when you heard about it or even afterwards?
Connie: Yes I did, because we lived so close to New York City, and there was talk at the time about chemical biological things that might be coming. In other words, people feared the worst. And you know, with prevailing winds and if there had been a big chemical or biological devastation in New York City I felt that we might be subjected to that. And to tell you the truth my dear, we have a few cats, and I went out and purchased a cat carrier for each one of my cats so that if anything happened I could jump in the car with grandpa and take off for western New Jersey.
Bill: Well, you know right after that happened there was all sorts of speculation about what else was in the offing. Were they also sending out chemical or biological agents through other people or was some guys carrying a suitcase with a dirty nuclear bomb in it that was going to be exploded? There was all kinds of rumors and speculation going on. Yes, there was concern.
Sara: Did you know anyone who was in New York when it happened or was even on the plane or anything?
Connie: When I grew up in Mattawan, which was about 30 miles south of New York City. We had next door neighbors and she had two children, a boy and a girl. And her husband worked at Wall Street and he still worked at Wall Street and he was late that day, and he lived. Her son went in early because he was very conscientious; he went in early all the time. They never ever found his body. And my sister-in-law knew the woman, and they had memorial services and different things. She told me that the hardest thing she saw was that this mother could not accept her son was dead. It just was devastating.
Sara: I remember you told me that and when I was in New York I looked to see if there was anything in the plaques where they wrote the names, but I called you to see the name but then you guys didn’t answer.
Connie: Oh ok, yeah. She just…he’s not dead. He’s not dead. I mean really, what can you say to her? But she could not accept that her son was dead. Bill did you know anybody?
Bill: No the only person I can think of. There was a Florham Park resident that was involved. But we didn’t know him.
Taylor: Did this change your perspective on anything? Say on flying. Or the US government or other countries…did it change how you thought about them?
Connie: Of course it did. When I had to come out and visit my very sweet granddaughters in California, it was much more of a white knuckle flight, but because I didn’t have to come for 7 or 8 months, by that time, fortunately some safeguards had been put it and I felt a little bit safer. But yes, it really did. One, a little bit later, when I realized the Clinton administration had chances to maybe stop some of this, I was very upset. Two, I was pleased Bush jumped right in. Maybe, I don’t know if he could have done anything more. He really knew after 8 years of Clinton there was a big transition. And today, if I have to come down on losing a tiny bit of my liberties and being alive, I will do it because it’s not anymore like, who is it that said give me liberty OR give me death? Patrick Henry. The world is so different today than when those words were spoken. I can understand those days because it was somebody coming with a rifle to your door and shoot you. Nowadays it’s not that way, it’s much more devastating. I can be killed by someone in another country who sends someone here with a bomb. It’s just so totally different now. I’m saying now I do want my liberties, but if I have to give up a tiny bit of them in order to protect my life and my grandchildren’s life, and my children’s life, I will do that. I won’t give them all up but I will give a little more restrictive power to the government to protect my life.
Bill: I think you summed it up for our view on the U.S. government and as far as our view on a foreign government?
Taylor: Yeah like other countries involvement.
Bill: It was almost impossible not to have negative feelings about where these terrorists were trained or came from, its just human nature. But in time those countries, some of those countries anyways, have stepped up and done things to better the human right of their citizens to be more cooperative with the U.S. on their war on terrorist for example Pakistan and Afghanistan. And hopefully the end result of Iraq will also be positive.
Taylor: What about the war, what are your thoughts? Do you support it or not support it?
Connie: Okay, at first I wasn’t really sure. And I’ve always felt so badly about 2000 plus U.S. personnel have died. And I really feel terrible, but I do know that I do believe that if there is a democracy , if they can establish a democracy in Iraq, that some of the other countries in that area will maybe overthrow their dictators or war Mongol leaders the ones that hate America. So hopefully, basically I guess I think the war will be a good idea if a democracy is established and that region turns around and the best thing is a fourth of the legislature or whatever are going to be women! In other words though, it’s turning the whole region around, to where girls have no education and are sexual slaves, the whole region may turn around because of Iraq and that’s my prayer.
Bill: I at first thought it was a mistake to go to war with Iraq; I think we should have pursued Bin Laden with all their resources that we had, but after a while I saw that it was necessary to get Saddam out of office and then with every atrocity that has happened, the beheadings of innocent men women and children on TV, boasting about it, the regular use of suicide bombers who blow themselves up in the midst of a civilian marketplace, there is no way we should allow that to continue.
Taylor: And this is your last question, overall how did this change your life? Um like moving and stuff like that?
Connie: You know I must tell you, at our age, we kind of, we had my brother in Jersey, but our really close relatives were all west of the Mississippi and it did…as much as I love my home in Jersey, it did make the move easier because I feel a little more safe out here. We are near Denver, but hopefully Denver will be one of the last cities to be hit. So it did make it easier for me in that respect to go ahead and move, but you girls don’t realize, we didn’t grow up with this horrible, horrible crap, you know countries went to war and they fought each other, and that was it. Nobody, nobody, nobody deliberately killed babies, children. In one school, teachers and children were beheaded, this is just insane now. These people now, there is no way you can deal with them; you need to defeat them. You can’t compromise with them, they want our freedom our way of life, gone, they want to rule control, their women, their children, and there is no way with America and their freedom and there is no way for them to fight against that. And that’s what they are fighting, and it’s sad. Grandpop?
Bill: Well there was one thing that you stepped into one thing that you said, there were not women and children killed in the past, Hitler killed women and children.
Connie: Oh yes, yes, and of course I hated him too. But how did it affect you Bill?
Bill: Well it was easy for me to move because I didn’t have any close family like grandmom did. And I like to play golf as well as I could in New Jersey, and it’s better because I never played golf in New Jersey in January and I’ve already been out twice this year.
Connie: But did you take safety into part of it?
Bill: No I can’t really say that.
Connie: I sure did.
Bill: I think it was more that we had to be closer to more of our family members because we were getting old and needed to change someone to change our diapers.
Taylor and Sara: hahahaha.
Doug Sutton:
California
Taylor: Where were you when you first heard about it?
Doug Sutton: I was watching television, the financial news station, when the first airplane hit the world trade center. It showed it about 5 minutes after the first plane hit. When the plane hit I believe that it had a news alert on immediately then it showed it very soon thereafter.
Taylor: What was your first thought when it happened when you first saw it?
Doug: I screamed at Sherry to wake up. She was groggy, and she didn’t believe what happened.
Taylor: Did you fear for your safety?
Doug: No
Taylor: Why not?
Doug: Because I’m in California. When the first plane hit the world trade center, it wasn’t clear that it was a terrorist attack. I wasn’t aware for instance that the direction the plane came from would have indicated to anyone who was aware that that was out of the ordinary. But I later heard that no plane normally comes from that direction, which would have told anybody who was watching that this was a problem, but I wasn’t aware of that, like most people, I just said what happened?
Sara: Did you know anyone who was in New York when it happened?
Doug: Yes.
Sara: Who?
Doug: I knew, because of the financial industry, I knew a number of people indirectly and a few directly working at the world trade center.
Sara: Did they get out okay?
Doug: No.
Taylor: Did this change your perspective on flying?
Doug: No.
Taylor: Why not?
Doug: Because it’s such an isolated incident and there was plenty of time before we next flew for the government to take to respond to it as far as safety goes. No, it didn’t bother me at all.
Taylor: Did it change your perspective on the U.S. government or the way you saw other countries or other people?
Doug: I thought that our response was very, very poor and that we definitely needed to do a lot to make ourselves more safe.
Taylor: Like what?
Doug: Like, better control over our security agencies, so they talk to each other better so they process the information one agency has more collectively rather than unilaterally.
Taylor: And did it change your perspective on other countries like Afghanistan?
Doug: No.
Sara: What do you think of the war right now? Do you support it? What are your feelings?
Doug: I don’t like the term war on terrorism because terrorism isn’t something you can have war on because everybody is always against terrorist acts that I know of. Terrorism is just an act used to accomplish a goal, so I’m sure back in the Revolutionary War we were the terrorists because the way we fought the war wasn’t socially acceptable to the British. But I so I don’t have any trouble with fighting extremists anywhere they are in the world but I have tremendous problems with how we are doing it and our approach to it. Did that make any sense to you?
Taylor: Yeah. Just how we were handling going in with force.
Doug: You guys use the term terrorism, all right, if you associate the term terrorism with the extremists who provided tremendous threat to our way of life, if you call the extremists that do that terrorists, then it would seem to me that the first thing you would have to say is to come to an agreement that you cannot fight global extremists unilaterally. Everybody has to agree to fight these people, and every country in the world. Not just one country.
Taylor: Which is us right?
Doug: Yes. That’s a very important starting point is that you cannot successfully fight global extremism unilaterally, you must get the commitment and support of many, many, many other large countries so that you can together come up with a plan that will be accepted by the rest of the free world.
Taylor: So you don’t think that we will come out of this successfully?
Doug: Not until we, absolutely not the way that it’s going, because it’s a unilateral approach. It’s our approach or nothing and as a result in Iraq, for instance where I don’t think we had any right going in the first place, and the real problem there is then that’s its been our way or the highway from the beginning. Did we make is safe after the initial assault? Did we provide the security for even the Iraqis walking the street? What did we do about bringing in other countries and other support systems and for that matter even the Iraqis to redevelop and rebuild Iraq? Did we gain the support of the Iraqis themselves in our efforts to make it their country and bring them back to a healthy environment? And is it in fact even possible to form one country with the pre specific sects that are there now? So no, I don’t think that we have a chance in your lifetime of making a Iraq a safe, special idealistic country that we would respect. And I think the evidence is clear, even the people we have supported in the local elections are not furthering the goals that you or I anybody that I would respect are worthwhile. Plus its women’s rights.
Taylor: So you’d suggest getting better people in office?
Doug: I think that first you have to start with a very basic thesis of what you have to accomplish. The problem is when you deal with things on a national level, its very, very tough Taylor in my opinion to get everybody or get the consensus because each one of us has their own specific opinions. For instance, there were many people who said that Iraq might not have been a tremendous threat to the United States but it was an overwhelming threat to Israel. And Israel deserved our support, therefore, even if they weren’t an imminent threat to us, they were an imminent threat to Israel so lets go get rid of Saddam for that reason alone. Other people said oil, we have to provide enough oil for us to live the way that we live so let’s go do it for that reason. Other reasons said that Hussein is a threat to Turkey and Turkey is the only true democracy, so we have to support Turkey, so numerous people had their own ideas of why we should do it, but what was most important was that nobody would pause long enough so that we could get the support of other countries and share the responsibly for success and commitment with other countries to make it a successful effort, so when it came time to ask the bigger question about can we in fact ever create a democracy, between the Turks, the Shias and the Sunnis, somebody in their right mind would have said this is never going to happen and they would say lets try and do something else, let’s create another form of government. Well perhaps they each live in an independent country, but they all get rights to the oil, but whatever the solution would have been, it would have been a better solution has we gone for bigger consensus and certainly one that would have offered better opportunities for success.
Sara: So what’s your reason?
Doug: My reason for what?
Sara: For just going to war, supporting the war.
Doug: I don’t support the efforts to go in initially for war. I’m an old man now, I remember the Gulf and in Vietnam, it was clearly obvious from before we went to war that we had no reason going into Iraq. It was not an imminent threat to us, and that’s the only reason that justified doing it. If we did go into it, it was certainly very irrational to go into with an army from the United States, because you are never going to get the commitment of the society. If very few people in the society have to pay the price, for the cost of war, whether it’s physically or monetarily, so I just think it was a terrible, terrible idea implemented terribly and those two terribles make it very tough to get a positive in the end.
Taylor: Yeah.
Taylor: How did this change your life? Like the attack, all this all these things in the past few years?
Doug: It made me more cynical towards politicians.
Taylor: Okay. That’s it.
Doug: Make sense?
Taylor: Yeah, yeah that’s good.
Doug: So what do you do about it? You can’t just walk around being cynical all the time. What do you do?
Taylor: Act?
Doug: How?
Taylor: Against the politicians?
Doug: Well I don’t know how you act against the politicians except to get involved in some level. And that’s for instance where Sherry worked very hard in the city of Costa Mesa; to elect the people who you believe will represent the interest that you hold very important at some level. That’s one thing you can do about it. Another thing you can do about it is study your heads off and say you know what? I’m a teenager now, I have my hands full, and by the way I can’t vote yet anyway.
Sara: I like that one. Hahahaha.
Doug: What you can do is better prepare yourself to understand how people argue, how arguments are made, and be ready to act independently in response to arguments of all sides so that you can learn how to form your own opinions that’s based on the education that we all hold so dearly. And that is most important, because if you hope in this interview process you’ll interview enough people so that you two will be able to form an opinion on what you hold dear and what you think might have been a better way to approach it or a better way to get out of it or a more conclusive way to form a consensus in whatever decision is made. So the decision right now and this is very important I think, is not why we got in there, it’s what the heck do we do now that we’re there? I still think it comes back to the same question; is you have to somehow get enough people to get an interest so that they all have something at stake and can all win from the result and we’ll all lose if the result is not achieved. In short, you have to get people to make more of a commitment. But I think its wonderful questions you asked, and for a very short interview, I hope you guys can come up with some type of idea. I don’t know what you’re going to do with it, but I would hope the results of your efforts is for you two to form an opinion on how old people think and what you can do better in 20 years. How it works is for you guys to do better in 20 years. I mentioned something to you before that’s very, very important. The very beginning of the Vietnam War, when we truly upgraded the amount of commitment we made, we were fighting over there for 4 or 5 years in very small numbers, the reason for going to war was something called the Gulf of Tonkin…. Bay Incident, where it was asserted that somebody shot on one of our ships, somebody attacked one of our ships.
Taylor: And they hadn’t right?
Doug: That’s very right, they didn’t. What’s so important about it was there was an independent muckraker who wrote a daily paper in Washington DC, a weekly paper and his name was I.S Stone, Izzy Stone, and he was an independent journalist who used to go out and get the stories himself, go home, set the type, and print up this independent newsletter and he published it weekly in Washington DC on the goings on of our politicians and what was really happening in Congress and he published that very same week that the Gulf of Tonkin happened that it was a fiasco, that it was a lie, that the incident never took place, and it was just political justification for committing us to an unjust war. The vote to go to war was 98: 2 I believe or 99: 1 in our US Senate. After that came out, and the summary of his statement in that article was all you have to do is go look in the Congressional record and you will see that this is a lie, because history doesn’t support the action. Izzy Stone, a very famous, very independent individual newspaper man, who started his own newspaper and printed this and built himself up to a very, very respectable subscription, number of subscribers to his newspaper and the fact is then that even knowing this, people went along because it was the political accepted thing to do. And it was terrible. So now here we have, we are arguing 40 years later, almost 40 years later that Iraq was necessary, but folks guess what, not for the reason that we said. So here we are, and how do we get out of it? Well we got out of Vietnam in a terrible, terrible way, nobody won anything from it. Kind of like “we spent all the money, lets just go home now” and all of the people who made tremendous individual commitment that deserve tremendous respect from everybody in this country and honor all the soldiers that made the commitment, what happened to them? Well my friends that came home from the war, had experiences like they were spit on at airports, actually spit on. People weren’t mad at them, they were mad at the politicians, but they didn’t have anyway any education or any experience that would allow them to voice their opposition in a way that they could be heard. So that’s what has to happen in the future is if you guys take this argument that you’re developing and say what can the difference be in the future, how can we change the system or educate the people enough so that they will be aware that what we are doing will only work if most of us agree ahead of time what the costs are. So that’s a long story for a nickel, but I hope you guys understand. Very, very important for you to come up with some type of summary what your opinions are and to be able to support those opinions with information you have gotten back and information you aren’t getting back. Remember guys, you Taylor and you also Sara, are looking at this from an entirely different perspective. You aren’t reading the same things I’m reading, looking at the same information I am, you’re listening to your parents and your teachers who I have no input from. So it’s up to you guys to come up with some conclusion or some opinion about what you think can be learned from this mess and how we can best deal with it and how you can best deal with it individually and collectively. I wish you luck with it. When I was a senior in high school no sorry a freshman in high school, our high school put on a mock debate on the Vietnam War and how we did it was we sent one person a guy named Ray Morris who was a congress man from Oregon I believe, opposed the entire going into Vietnam, and he was one out of the very few, and Richard Nixon supported him. And what we did was, we had a mock election between the two in the school and it allowed everybody to debate both sides of the issue, is who would you vote for? And it’s a wonderful idea. Anything that you’re doing this way but most importantly your ability at the end of this thing to convince your classmates and your teacher of your side of the argument is what it’s all about. Your points not mine.
Taylor: Yeah.
Doug: And if I can help you anymore, I would be glad to. And I thank you for including me in your interview and I hope my answers were enough to at least give you an idea. Take care Sara. Bye kids.
Sara Traberman:
New Jersey
Sara: Where were you when you first heard about it?
Sara Traberman: I was actually home, because at that time I was not working. Actually no, I correct that, I was at the gym. I was on the treadmill and I remember everybody was sort of looking at the TV, and people were talking about, that there was an accident with a plane and everything and I got off the treadmill and I was watching the TV and all of a sudden I saw, because somebody actually taped that second plane hitting the thing and as soon as I saw that, I left the gym. That’s where I was.
Taylor: Okay. What was your first thought when you saw it? What was the first thought that came to your mind?
Sara T.: I was completely horrified. And shocked.
Taylor: Yeah.
Taylor: Did you fear for your safety?
Sara T.: Right at that point, no. Because I didn’t really understand the full intent of what was going on. You know I still thought maybe it was still an accident.
Taylor: Yeah, not an attack on the United States or anything.
Sara T.: Right.
Taylor: How far away do you live from New York?
Sara T.: We’re about 20 miles from New York.
Taylor: So pretty close.
Sara T.: Pretty close. Actually, you can see New York from certain parts of the town because it’s kind of on a little hill mountain hill thing. You can see the skyline.
Taylor: So you could see the twin towers?
Sara T.: Well you could definitely see the big smoke for a long time after that. I think it was maybe two or three weeks after that. There was a big hazy black cloud that was there, and it took a long time for it to dissipate.
Sara: Yeah. Did you know anyone who was in New York when it happened?
Sara T.: Well, my husband was in New York, he works midtown. You know the twin towers were downtown so there’s that distinction. So he was midtown. I mean I know a lot of friends who work in the city and things like that. Nobody I know live there, but a lot of people I know work there.
Taylor: Did you fear for your husband’s safety?
Sara T.: Yeah, you know I was worried because you know I don’t think they were clear about how everybody was going to get home, and there was talk about bridges possibly getting attacked. Manhattan is an island and to come back to New Jersey you either have to go over a bridge or go through a tunnel. Lots of different options but I know they were on the news because nobody really knew how far this was going to go or what else might happen. So I was pretty nervous and I think cell phone service was kind of spotty. I think I emailed him or he emailed me. He had a blackberry.
Taylor: So he was ok?
Sara T.: Yeah, yeah he was ok.
Taylor: How did this change your perspective on flying?
Sara T.: You know it really didn’t. It just became more of an inconvenience with all the additional security and stuff like that but I didn’t decide like ok I’m not going to fly anymore because this thing happened. You know the thing that scared me more was that Unabomber guy or that not the Unabomber guy, the shoe bomber guy. That thing kind of scared me more. I mean that thing had nothing to do with 9/11. It didn’t really change the way I felt about flying.
Sara: Did it change your perspective on the way you saw the US government? Or did you like the way they handled the situation or not handled the situation?
Sara T.: I felt very, very proud of the way that Rudy Giuliani handled it, he was the mayor at the time, and I thought he did a really good job like keeping everybody calm and things like that. And I thought you know I thought everybody sort of rallied around it and I felt like it was time where there wasn’t all this bickering between democrats and republicans and everything else. I really felt like the country came together and I felt pretty good about like all the responses and everything because really, it was such a thing that really never had happened before. And who knew how to respond, but you know I felt pretty good about the responses from the government.
Taylor: And did it change your perspectives of other countries; say like Iraq or Afghanistan or where the terrorists were from?
Sara T.: Well I already had bad ideas about those countries. You know, I’m a big supporter of Israel, so I just feel like a lot of the Arab countries they harbor terrorists, and you know, this is just sort of something that was probably inevitable. And that you know everybody was in their own little world and not paying attention to it, but you know Israel is under attack everyday, and I was pretty familiar with…
Sara: What do you think of the war that’s going on? Do you support it?
Sara T.: I do support the war, I support the war and I don’t like what’s going on with people trying to run for the hills because it’s not exactly turning out maybe the way everybody thought. And I don’t like the way everyone is saying President Bush lied, you know I think that’s juvenile. I think that everybody looked at the same information and if that information wasn’t correct at the time, that doesn’t mean that Bush lied, it meant that the information was incorrect! I do support the war, and I think it’s horrible that you know all these people are dying and all these civilians are dying and you know the troops are dying but I still support it.
Taylor: What’s your hope of how we come out of the war? How do you think it will be successfully what do you want to see after it ends?
Sara T.: Well I think the only way we’re going to ever be able to leave is if you know the Iraqis themselves you know can stand up and self govern and get a grip on all the factions that are stabilizing the country right now. And you know I think that the Iraqis have proven that they really do want a democracy right now, but it’s these people that I guess fear democracy because then they’re not going to have the same powers anymore. I think those are the people that are really messed up and there a lot of different groups that are doing it and it’s really kind of a mess over there but I think the one incredible thing has been is that the Iraqi people every time there was an election they go and they vote and they’re under attack and they’re under threats and things like that. And I think you know the people are going to have to be able to govern themselves and keep the peace themselves and my feeling is that’s going to take a really long time.
Taylor: How did this change your life like overall in anyway?
Sara T.: What, 9/11?
Taylor: Yeah 9/11 and this war that’s going on.
Sara T.: Well actually I should tell you that you know when I answered that question about traveling I guess I forgot that I actually had a trip planned to Switzerland in February of ’03 and that was right before the war started, and I decided not to go. I pulled out of the trip; for other reasons too but that was a big reason I didn’t want to be in Switzerland with a war starting. I was afraid I might not be able to get home. So I guess it didn’t really have to do with 9/11 it was more the war. I’m sorry what was the question?
Taylor: How did this change your life, this whole event in history?
Sara T.: Well, I don’t think my life has really changed that much you know and I think I’m fortunate for that because a lot of people have been impacted but I do feel very sad about what’s going on in this world now. I’m very sad about all the violence and you know the fact that the Middle East and Arab countries. There doesn’t seem to be any end to the killing and the fighting and so I mean I’m just more pessimistic I guess maybe then I was you know five or ten years ago about the future. You know, because things like the Gulf War in the beginnings of the 90s you know that war was like over in I don’t know three or four months and then went Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and we went in there and got him out. You know those wars were over pretty quickly. They were barely even wars. This thing is just dragging and there’s no end in sight and even though I support it I just feel bad about you know what’s going on in the world. It just makes me more pessimistic I guess about the future.
Christine Lauer:
Pennsylvania
Sara: Where were you when you first heard about this?
Christine Lauer: I was at work, sitting at my desk.
Taylor: What was your first thought?
Christine: I thought oh my god; we are going to go to war.
Taylor: Really? Right away?
Christine: Right away because I’m a product of the cold war in the 60s. Whenever anything happened there was always that threat of nuclear war that always hung over our head. So whenever anything like this happened, all those memories get dredged up and that’s what I think about.
Taylor: Did you fear for your safety?
Christine: Personal safety? No.
Taylor: Whose safety then if not yours?
Christine: I feared for the people who were in large cities.
Taylor: Yeah, okay.
Sara: Did you anybody in New York when it happened?
Christine: No I did not.
Taylor: Did this change you perspective on flying?
Christine: No it did not.
Taylor: What about the U.S. government and how you saw them?
Christine: I feel that the U.S. government is quite divided against itself and I think that there’s a lot of finger pointing and I think there is a lot of blame that needs to be placed and a lot of fault that needs to be placed and I feel that until we learn to start working together, and put politics aside, that we’re never, its only brought my opinion of the government more to a head and it hasn’t changed.
Taylor: Okay. Did it change your perspective on how you saw other countries say Afghanistan and them?
Christine: I feel sorrier for the people who live there.
Sara: Okay what do you think of the war? Do you support it?
Christine: I have real mixed feelings about it. I feel again, it’s the same kind of thing, where there’s a lot of finger pointing. There’s too much political motivation we don’t have any really great leaders, um I can’t fault Bush per say, you have to fault everyone who’s in the government. They are complaining about the fact that we have no security and that the 9/11 commission, nothing has changed, and yet every time we try to make a move to change anything, and put more security measures in place, then we are told we are violating civil rights so its just another point in how we are fighting against each other.
Taylor: How did this change your life?
Christine: It makes me more frightened that our pendulum is not going to swing back and that the people who are the fanatics in the Middle East and feel that the afterlife is much better than the life they are living right now are going to kill innocent people again.
Taylor: Well, that’s all the questions we have.
Christine: Oh, okay. See I told you I was very opinionated! Alright well I’ll let you get on to your other stuff. It was wonderful talking to you.
Glenn Palmiere:
Florida
Sara: Where were you when you first heard about it?
Glenn Palmiere: I was in Tallahassee, Florida in a meeting.
Taylor: What was your first thought?
Glenn: Well my first thought was that I thought that someone had an accident and you know, it was a small plane that flew into the world trade center because the first report that came out was that a plane had flown into the world trade center so I thought that it was just an accident.
Sara: Did you fear for your safety after you found out what it really was?
Glenn: I didn’t fear for my safety because I was so far away from New York City.
Taylor: Did you know anyone in New York when it happened?
Glenn: Yes I did know a good friend of mine was in New York City on business when it occurred.
Sara: Was your friend okay?
Glenn: Yes they were okay; they were able to get out of the city. What happened was they were not able to fly home and they tried to rent a car and what they essentially had to do was to get on a bus with a whole bunch of other people and get back to Texas and it took them seven days to do it.
Taylor: Oh my gosh…Did this change your perspective on flying at all?
Glenn: The only reason it changed my perspective on flying is that it is a big inconvenience now to fly because of all the security checks and it becomes a big hassle to travel now.
Sara: Did it change your perspective on the U.S. government or the way you saw they handled the situation?
Glenn: No not really because I didn’t think they really could have done anything to prevent it from happening. When you have extremists they’ll do things to find a way to cause havoc, so.
Taylor: Did it change your perspective on other countries, like Afghanistan or anything?
Glenn: No because it was just 9 individuals who did it, it wasn’t the country that did it.
Taylor: Yeah. What do you think of the war? Do you support it?
Glenn: I do support the war. I think that if we do not take some kind of action to prevent things like this from happening in the future, that we will be living in state of chaos so I do support the war.
Sara: How did this change your life?
Glenn: It makes me wake up to travel and makes me think that if there’s an option to drive, I will drive before I will fly just because of the inconvenience.
Taylor: That’s it.
Glenn: That’s all the questions?
Taylor: Yeah.
Glenn: Will you tell me if I got any right or wrong?
Taylor: No.
Eric Bronk:
California
Sara: Where were you when you first heard about the attacks?
Eric Bronk: At home.
Taylor: What was your first thought?
Eric: My first thought was that it was an accident. And when I saw the second plane hit, I knew that it was war.
Taylor: Did you fear for your safety?
Eric: Not personally, no.
Sara: Did you know anyone who was in New York when it happened?
Eric: In the buildings or in New York?
Taylor and Sara: In the buildings and in New York?
Eric: Only Indirectly I do business; there are companies we did business with that were in the trade centers.
Taylor: Oh okay. Did this change your perspective on flying?
Eric: No.
Sara: Did it change you perspective on the U.S. government? Or did you like the way they handled things?
Eric: On the U.S. government or the administration?
Taylor: Whichever.
Eric: It’s really two different questions, but no that particular event did not change my opinion of the government or the administration.
Taylor: Did it change your perspective on other countries?
Eric: Absolutely.
Taylor: How did it change your perspective?
Eric: I recognized that we were at war and that certain countries were harboring terrorists that we needed to do everything we could to stop terrorism.
Sara: What do you think of the war? Do you support it?
Eric: Yes.
Sara: Why?
Eric: I think it’s a necessary process in our overall global war against terrorism.
Taylor: How did this whole thing change your life?
Eric: I think that we are now in World War III and while I don’t think that the issue of terrorism affects most people individually in a small world sense, I think it changed everyone, it changed my perspective on the risk of living, and a large perspective, I think we are all at risk, and to the extent to be recognized, that has to change life. But we all go about our daily lives and to a great extent at least in our country the risk of terrorism doesn’t affect our daily decisions. And we go about our lives, however philosophically and emotionally I think it has an impact on everyone.
Taylor: Okay. That is it.
Eric: Okay, short and sweet.